Author: Steven Sahiounie

Pakistan’s economy is almost on the verge of collapse. With inflation at 25 per cent, the Pakistani rupee trading in the market at 255 to the dollar and foreign exchange reserves which have sunk to about $3.5 billion, Pakistan is staring at a possible loan default. It desperately needs external funds to shore up its dwindling reserves. It has received pledges of $10 billion from foreign donors. But no one will go ahead till the IMF bailout package of $6 billion signed in 2019 goes through. The IMF has insisted on the correction of structural imbalances in the economy and advocated strict conditionalities. The government…

The World Bank slashed its global growth forecasts from projections it made in mid-2022 on the back of what it sees as broadly worsening economic conditions. The international development institution downgraded almost all of its forecasts for advanced economies in the world, cutting its growth outlook for the global economy to 1.7% for 2023, it said in its latest report, Global Economic Prospects. The organization earlier projected the world economy to expand by 3% in 2023. The adjustment was led by a significant downgrade to its prospects for the U.S. economy — it now forecasts 0.5% growth from an earlier projection of 2.4%.…

The layoffs come a day after Microsoft said it would reduce staff numbers by 10,000 in the coming months, following similar cuts by Meta, Amazon and Twitter. Google is laying off 12,000 workers, or about 6 percent of its workforce, becoming the latest tech company to trim staff as the economic boom that the industry rode during the Covid-19 pandemic ebbed. CEO Sundar Pichai informed staff on Friday at the Silicon Valley giant about the cuts in an email that was also posted on the company’s news blog. The firings add to tens of thousands of other job losses recently…

Ford declined to comment on the report published by Automobilwoche but said transformation to electric vehicle. Ford plans to cut more than a thousand jobs at its main German plant in Cologne, German auto publication Automobilwoche has reported, citing unnamed sources. The head of the works council has called a meeting for all 14,000 employees of the Cologne plant, Ford’s biggest in Germany, on Monday, the report said on Friday. Ford, which according to its website employs around 20,000 people in Germany, declined to comment on the report but said the transformation to electric vehicles required “significant change” in the way…

Shares of Gautam Adani’s business empire sink nearly 20 percent as scathing report by Hindenburg Research ignites rout in conglomerate’s listed firms, casting doubts on how investors will respond to company’s record $2.45 billion secondary sale. Shares in the business empire of Asia’s richest man Gautam Adani has nosedived, extending this week’s losses to $48 billion, days after a US investment firm Hindenburg Research claimed it had committed “brazen” corporate fraud. Adani, 60, began his week the world’s third-richest person but has tumbled down the rankings to seventh on Forbes’ billionaires tracker after a $22.6 billion hit to his fortune…

“I will not let it happen. Not on my watch,” says US President Biden as he accuses his opponents of gimmick to allow “millionaires and billionaires” to avoid paying taxes. US President Joe Biden has said he will veto any Republican legislation that threatens to sow “chaos” in the country’s economy. “I will not let it happen. Not on my watch. I will veto everything,” he said in a speech laying out his economic vision at a Virginia pipe fitters union hall on Thursday. Biden said congressional Republicans’ push to block expansion of the nation’s borrowing limit, threatening a US…

Italy’s energy giant said the deal will have a “significant impact on the industry and the associated supply chain, allowing a significant contribution to the Libyan economy.” Italian energy giant Eni has signed an $8 billion gas deal with Libya’s state-run National Oil Corporation as Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited Tripoli. Eni said on Saturday it was the first major project in Libya since early 2000 and involved the development of two offshore gas fields. “The combined gas production from the two structures will start in 2026 and reach a plateau of 750 million of standard gas cubic feet per…

On the second day of the federal cabinet retreat, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his ministers heard from a trio of economists who came bearing grim news about Canada’s economic outlook. The economy is expected to weaken considerably, unemployment will tick up and inflationary pressures may not ease as quickly as hoped, the economists — Kevin Milligan of the University of British Columbia, Carolyn Wilkins of Princeton University and Anil Arora of Statistics Canada — told a morning session of cabinet. “There are some serious risks for the next year,” Milligan told reporters after meeting with Trudeau and other ministers…

The move is part of the central bank’s moves to reduce cash flow within the borders of Africa’s biggest economy. Nigeria’s central bank has launched a domestic card scheme to rival foreign cards like Mastercard and Visa, hoping to enhance its drive to make Africa’s biggest economy a cashless society and save the country foreign transaction fees. The announcement on Thursday by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor, Godwin Emefiele, follows its launch of Africa’s first digital currency, the e-naira, in October 2021. Emefiele told a virtual launch of the AfriGo card scheme that although penetration of card payments in…

WASHINGTON (AP) — The second consecutive quarter of economic growth that the government reported Thursday underscored that the nation isn’t in a recession despite high inflation and the Federal Reserve’s fastest pace of interest rate hikes in four decades. Yet the U.S. economy is hardly in the clear. The solid growth in the October-December quarter will do little to alter the widespread view of economists that a recession is very likely sometime this year. For now, the economy expanded at a 2.9% annual rate in the fourth quarter, though some of the underlying figures weren’t as healthy. Consumer spending, for…